Alternatives

Chapter XIV: Not That Kind

Based upon Stargate: SG-1

Rating: T

- EAR - Based on the Season 10 episode: "The Road Not Taken"; takes place before said episode in the alternate reality when Major Samantha Carter is still married to dotcom billionaire Doctor Rodney McKay. While Colonel Jack O'Neill did participate in the Abydos mission, he did not come out of retirement to participate in the restart of the stargate program the following year -

- . - - - . -

"I can't do this." Major Samantha Carter dropped her fork and wiped her face, preparing to stand up from the table.

"Do what?" Colonel Jack O'Neill, retired, asked.

"This," she made a broad gesture to the somewhat romantic, yet not candlelit, dinner in front of them. "I am not this kind of person." She stood up and took a few steps from the table, suddenly very conscious of the fact that they were in a crowded restaurant.

"The kind of person who has a friendly dinner with a coworker?" he asked, still seated.

She took a sharp step towards him. "Oh, don't you pretend that's what this is." She turned on her heel and stormed out of the restaurant.

"Carter!" O'Neill shouted after her once she was halfway across the parking lot.

She didn't have to glance back to see that he was running after her. She opened the door to her vehicle and cursed aloud when he slammed it shut.

"What!"

"You're not what kind of person?" he asked in a dangerously quiet voice.

"I'm not the kind of person who has an affair!" she snapped back, probably a bit too loud. "There, I said it! Happy now?"

"I just wanted to hear you say it."

"Well, I said it. But I won't do it." She opened her car door again. "I'm going home."

"Would he notice if you didn't?" he asked in a louder voice.

She stopped dead and turned to him. "What?"

"Would he notice if you didn't come home one night?" he asked in a calm, almost dark, voice. "Would he even care?"

Sam tried to think of a witty response, but her mind was drawing a blank. The only thing she could think was 'Would Rodney notice?'

O'Neill reached out and touched her arm gently. "Would he notice if you slept somewhere else?" his tone darkened and softened. "Would he notice if you slept with someone else? Would he care?"

"I would care!" she pointed emphatically at her chest. "I would notice and I would care! I'm not that kind of person!"

"What kind of person?" he hissed. "We're living under martial law, or hadn't you noticed, Major?! The rules are different. Morality doesn't really exist anymore."

"Morality ceases to exist only when we kill it!"

"Landry already killed it!"

"Is there a problem?" two national guardsmen walked over to Sam's car. "Forgive me," one of them said, "but we couldn't help but overhear some of your conversation."

Sam smirked darkly and pulled out her military ID. "Major Samantha Carter."

The Corporal smiled. "Yes Ma'am, I recognize you, and you, as well, Sir. Because I know who you both are and how vital you are to the protection of this planet, the Private and I will forget everything we've heard this evening. Now, if you'd like to be on your way."

"Thank you, Corporal," Sam said. "I was just leaving, anyway."

O'Neill stepped back with the two soldiers and watched her drive away. Sam took a glance through her rear view mirror and scowled. He was right, and she knew it. Rodney wouldn't notice. Rodney wouldn't care. And, frankly, she wasn't sure if she cared anymore.

She had met O'Neill when they started screening people for the ancient gene to activate the second knowledge repository they found. The first one had fried Major Kawalsky's brain and killed him, they were hoping that the ancient gene would prevent that.

They were wrong. Luckily, the Asgard were able to help him.

Before he had been brought in for screening, Sam had remembered the name from the Abydos mission roster, the mission she was supposed to go on. She even thought that she had met him before at some official function. However, none of that prepared her to find her heart in her throat upon meeting him again that short time ago. He was damn sexy.

He was arrogant, ornery, unpleasant, disrespectful, and a little bit of a jerk. But he was damn sexy.

After working with him for a few weeks and then almost seeing him die, she knew she was in love with him. Sam really wasn't all that surprised, her marriage with Rodney had ceased to be anything more than simply bearable years ago.

He was an arrogant ass, too. But the difference between Jack O'Neill and Rodney McKay was that O'Neill was faking it, a little, for dramatic effect. And that O'Neill was damn sexy, but that was a different story.

Sam pulled into her parking spot and looked up at the tower which housed their penthouse, Rodney's really. His words and her thoughts kept bouncing around her head.

He wouldn't notice.

O'Neill was damn sexy.

She restarted her car and put it in reverse.

- . - . -

Sam made her way around the dark room, retrieving her clothes, which had been removed in haste several hours before. She sat on the corner of the bed, trying to convince herself that she wasn't a terrible person. Images and sounds flashed through her mind. Why didn't she feel more guilty than she did? She didn't feel all that guilty, which made her feel awful.

She started to stand so she could go to the bathroom, get changed and get the hell out of there as fast as possible.

O'Neill's hand grabbed her arm before she was upright and pulled her back down. "Stay," he whispered.

She cocked her head downwards and tried to think of a good reason to say 'no.'

He moved on the bed behind her and closed the distance between them. "He won't care, but I will." Starting at her lower back, he placed wet kisses up her spine.

"Not done?" she hummed.

He smirked against her back. "Not if I want you to come back."

She spun around. "You want me to come back?"

He reached out and took a hold of her hip gently, pulling her onto her back, and leaned over her. He nodded, their faces mere inches from each other. "I want you to come back a lot."

"Come back a lot? Or want it a lot?"

She was momentarily distracted from her question by his hands on her hips. "Both," he whispered, continuing to close the distance between them.

"Good, because I want to come back a lot."

He pushed some hair behind her ear. "I would notice," he whispered.

"What?"

"If you didn't come home. I would notice, and I would care."

Well, that settles it, she thought as his lips made contact with her neck. She didn't feel guilty at all, and she didn't even feel bad about that.

- . - . -

Sam sat at her desk trying to convince herself not to go over to O'Neill's this evening. She was trying to prove to herself that she didn't need to see him. She wasn't doing so well.

Sam knew she was in too deep when she woke up one morning next to Jack O'Neill having actually slept. She had gotten to his house late, like she often did, and he was already asleep. Instead of waking him, as she often did, she just climbed into bed next to him, tucked her head into the crook of her arm and fell asleep.

This wasn't just an affair any longer and she knew it.

She was at Jack's one or two nights a week, no more, and usually spent a night or two at the base, leaving Rodney with three to five days. He never asked her about it. He didn't even seem to notice. He just acted the same: arrogant and uninterested.

She wasn't even upset about the plain lack of physical contact between the two of them, in fact she appreciated it. Before, her body needed at least a hug, a morning kiss, or at the very least a shoulder chuck on the way out the door. Now, she was perfectly fine with him avoiding her completely; sleeping on the same bed, yet miles away.

Now it wasn't just sleeping with O'Neill, but sleeping next to O'Neill. It had to stop and she knew it.

She didn't say anything. She didn't mention it. She just continued their schedule. He would greet her at the door with a smile and dinner prepared. They would eat and maybe watch a movie or something, and retire to her betrayal and their mutual satisfaction.

After the one morning she woke up next him having actually slept, she tried to avoid him. It had been a week, almost two. But she sat at her desk trying to will herself away from him. She thought she had herself convinced when she headed topside and to her car. She knew that she had lost her will when she found herself driving towards his home instead of her own.

She walked in, apologizing and inventing reasons why she hadn't been there for so long.

He didn't ask any questions, allowing her to defend herself against no prosecution. Eventually, he silenced her gently. "Carter," he whispered. "I'm the other guy here, you don't owe me any explanations at all."

"You said you'd notice."

He smiled. "I did notice. And I do care. But I also came into this knowing that I don't have the luxury of the right to know where you've been. I've no right to ask or to judge."

She placed a kiss on his lips and rested her head against his chest. I want you to have the right, she thought to herself before shoving the thought away. This was just an affair, she told herself. It was an affair and nothing else.

Then why did she feel more guilty about missing a night with him than cheating on her husband in the first place?

- . - . -

Rodney was sitting in the living room when she got home from work that Friday. "I don't want to know who it is."

"What?" she asked, stopping dead in her tracks.

"I don't want to know who you've been sleeping with for . . . what, two months? Three?"

It took all her strength to keep her jaw from falling to the floor.

"Oh, don't look that surprised, I wasn't. Well, that's a lie. I was a little surprised, I thought you would have started sleeping around two years ago, at least. Congratulations, Sam, you're a better woman than I thought you were."

She couldn't believe they were having this conversation. Well, they weren't having this conversation, Rodney was just talking.

"Just so you know, I haven't been. Sleeping around, I mean. And, that's not really any reflection on you, or -- really -- me for that matter. Just thought you should know so you don't go all 'woman scorned' on me."

Sam didn't know what to say, or even think.

"You're surprised that I don't want to know who? Really? Let's be honest, you're going outside this marriage to get something you need and you've probably upgraded. So what am I going to do? Go punch a guy twice my size with half my brain?" He shook his head. "No. I'll just let it go.

"Well, out of curiosity, who? Lorne?" He paused and shook his head again. "No, wait, don't tell me. I don't really want to know. Well, it's not that. I just don't care, really." He gestured to the manila envelope on the coffee table as he stood up. "Divorce papers, when you want to sign them. Everything's about half and half." He paused and thought for a second. "Why the hell didn't I get a prenuptial agreement?" he asked himself, and then looked her up and down. "Oh, right, because you're smoking hot.

"Well, that'll never happen again. Fool me once, as they say . . ." He smiled that smug McKay smile and turned from her, heading towards the bedroom. "You don't have to sleep here anymore," he called back to her. "There's really no one to keep up appearances with."

- . - . -

"I thought you were staying with Doctor DotCom tonight," Jack said as he let Carter into his home.

"He knows," she said simply, sinking down onto the edge of the coffee table.

"Yeah?"

"Figured it out," she didn't look up at him, her eyes somewhat out of focus. "He wasn't mad, either. He was just . . . smug, like he was being proven right."

"So . . ."

"We're getting a divorce."

Jack nodded and settled on the edge of the chair across from her, careful to keep their knees from knocking. "So, this'll be the last time I see you outside of the Mountain?"

"What? Why?"

He didn't answer.

"Is this just an affair to you?"

He watched her cringe. She just let him know that it was not just an affair to her. He took one of her hands gently. "Are you saying that it's not?"

She didn't answer.

He leaned forward and breathed on her ear. "'Cause I would love to maintain our current arrangement." He snaked his hand up her thigh. "Or, perhaps, improve it a little."

"Improve?" she almost moaned, leaning forward ever so slightly.

"Yeah," he whispered and ran his tongue over the skin on her neck under her ear. "Maybe you want to stay here every night."

She grabbed his hand, which had slipped a little higher up the inside of her thigh, and leaned back to meet his gaze. "For how long?"

He smiled. "More than just a couple of days, if that's what you're asking."

"I don't know what I'm asking."

"Good, because I don't know what I'm offering."

She released his hand to continue on it's journey up the inside of her thigh, and leaned forward to whisper in his ear. "I like what you're offering right now."

In one swift moment, he pulled her up onto his lap and ran his teeth along her neck. "I like what you're asking for."

She unzipped her knee-high boots, and pulled them off as she stood up. Dropping her jacket, she made her way to his bedroom.

Jack watched her walk for a second, his throbbing blood blocking his air passages. Leaving his beer unfinished and The Simpsons on mute, Jack hurried through his house to his bedroom and his sexy, newly separated . . . Carter. She was still just Carter, but maybe he could change that -- sooner rather than later.

- . - - - . -